Is this a solution they rolled on their own? Cause it's abysmal. I've seen Leaflet being used for gigapixel images and it's great, even if it seems unorthodox.
I'm not affiliated, but I've been seriously debating it for a long time. The photo is a composite of the sun and the sun's heliosphere from the 2017 eclipse. One of my favorite images of the Sun.
The scale and violence of the processes that drive the Sun are really mind-blowing. 43 million km away and it's getting on for 20kW per square metre. Edit: the probe is that far from the sun.
Fun fact: if the Solar System had an atmosphere that stretched from the Sun to the Earth (at least) then the sound of the Sun from Earth would be ~100dB.
IIRC the Sun converts ~4.5 million tons of mass into energy every second and even then, there are objects that are trillions of times more energetic/violent. The first LIGO detection I believe converted 5 Solar masses into energy in about a second.
You just reminded me of https://spacesounds.com which I remember seeing in the very early 2000s and thinking it was awesome.
And 4.5 million tons of mass/second may be unimaginably huge, but the Sun is so big it can also do that constantly for literally billions and billions of years. And it's not even an especially big star!
Only 20kw per square meter on the surface of the sun ? How come it is so low ?
We receive about 1kw of sunlight per square meter on Earth, and earth is 149M km from the sun. From napkin math, it should rather be ~45MW/sqm on the sun to receive 1kw/sqm on Earth (surface of the sphere of radius 149M km divided by surface of the sun gives ~45000, so 1 watt from the sun becomes 1/45000 watt when it reaches the Earth)
Your calculations are incorrect. Use common sense, models, and first principles. Light point source irradiance is E = P/4πr², so inverse square law. It's 1361 W/m² at Earth's distance of 1.5e11 m. Solar Orbiter dips down to 4.2e10 m. ¼ the distance,
Total solar power output = 4 * π * (1.5e11 [m])² * 1361 [W] = 3.85e26 W/m²
At Solar Orbiter's perihelion, assuming the distance from the Sun's point center rather than the Sun's surface = TSPO / (4 * π * (4.2e10 [m])²) = 1.74e4 W/m².
^ Except for Earth's irradiance and the distances, these are theoretical rough values rather than observed ones because reality is messier than simplified models.
The real issue was that I didn't get that you were talking about Solar Orbiter, I thought you were saying that the irradiance of the sun was 20kW/m2, which seemed low to me, but I didn't even know the word "irradiance" so I didn't know what to type on Google to check it.
Thanks for your detailed calculus :)
I’m astounded by how plain and round the visible light images are. Why is the corona only visible in the UV images, if it is, according to the article, visible from earth?
Corona is very hot (millions of degrees) as opposed to 6000 of the Sun's surface, therefore it has higher contrast over Sun's surface if you go to shorter wavelengths. The reason corona is still visible from Earth is because it you mask the main solar disk (during the eclipse).
It might be that the surface is much brighter in visible light than the corona rather than the corona emits no visible light (as anyone who witnessed the recent total solar eclipse can attest). Since the corona is made up of rarefied high energy particles I would expect it to emit less total, but more short wavelength light.
Firstly the Sun itself rotates roughly once a month, and secondly if the probe wasn't going round the sun, it would be called the Solar Impactor, not the Solar Orbiter. Or maybe the Solar Evaporated Slag Cloud when it got close enough.
Actual zoomable images here: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_...
Is this a solution they rolled on their own? Cause it's abysmal. I've seen Leaflet being used for gigapixel images and it's great, even if it seems unorthodox.
While it works, the resolution is underwhelming and there's no scale.
Would be great to see an earth or moon or country map outline for scale.
not sure if its the server traffic or browser limitations but zooming and panning are quite slow and somewhat dent the awesomeness of this.
Best looking image ever captured of the Sun's entire surface goes to:
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272
by
Andrew McCarthy: https://www.instagram.com/cosmic_background/
Jason Guenzel: https://www.instagram.com/thevastreaches/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr2elMpaMAAqgZN?format=jpg&name=...
For anyone that wants to buy the 139 megapixel image for printing, it's $50 here: https://cosmicbackground.io/products/fusion-of-helios
I'm not affiliated, but I've been seriously debating it for a long time. The photo is a composite of the sun and the sun's heliosphere from the 2017 eclipse. One of my favorite images of the Sun.
That’s beautiful, but not really a photo of the sun. It’s heavily processed and digitally modified.
It’s still a photo of the sun, even if processed. You wouldn’t see much on an unprocessed photo of the sun..
Twitter say "something went wrong", plus three dialogues consuming or obscuring something more than half the page.
The scale and violence of the processes that drive the Sun are really mind-blowing. 43 million km away and it's getting on for 20kW per square metre. Edit: the probe is that far from the sun.
And that is in all directions!
Fun fact: if the Solar System had an atmosphere that stretched from the Sun to the Earth (at least) then the sound of the Sun from Earth would be ~100dB.
IIRC the Sun converts ~4.5 million tons of mass into energy every second and even then, there are objects that are trillions of times more energetic/violent. The first LIGO detection I believe converted 5 Solar masses into energy in about a second.
You just reminded me of https://spacesounds.com which I remember seeing in the very early 2000s and thinking it was awesome.
And 4.5 million tons of mass/second may be unimaginably huge, but the Sun is so big it can also do that constantly for literally billions and billions of years. And it's not even an especially big star!
> 43 million km away
er, 149 million km away [0] not 43
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
The Solar Orbiter is 43 million km away from the Sun at its closest.
If we got 17.5ish kW per square metre here on Earth, you'd know about it (but only briefly).
Oops, my bad
Only 20kw per square meter on the surface of the sun ? How come it is so low ?
We receive about 1kw of sunlight per square meter on Earth, and earth is 149M km from the sun. From napkin math, it should rather be ~45MW/sqm on the sun to receive 1kw/sqm on Earth (surface of the sphere of radius 149M km divided by surface of the sun gives ~45000, so 1 watt from the sun becomes 1/45000 watt when it reaches the Earth)
Where am I wrong ?
Your calculations are incorrect. Use common sense, models, and first principles. Light point source irradiance is E = P/4πr², so inverse square law. It's 1361 W/m² at Earth's distance of 1.5e11 m. Solar Orbiter dips down to 4.2e10 m. ¼ the distance,
Total solar power output = 4 * π * (1.5e11 [m])² * 1361 [W] = 3.85e26 W/m²
Sun's "surface" irradiance = TSPO / (4 * π * (6.96e8 [m])²) = 6.32e9 W/m²
At Solar Orbiter's perihelion, assuming the distance from the Sun's point center rather than the Sun's surface = TSPO / (4 * π * (4.2e10 [m])²) = 1.74e4 W/m².
^ Except for Earth's irradiance and the distances, these are theoretical rough values rather than observed ones because reality is messier than simplified models.
The real issue was that I didn't get that you were talking about Solar Orbiter, I thought you were saying that the irradiance of the sun was 20kW/m2, which seemed low to me, but I didn't even know the word "irradiance" so I didn't know what to type on Google to check it. Thanks for your detailed calculus :)
It's basic algebra. Calculus would involve derivatives or integrals.
Because that's the irradiance at the Solar Orbiter's closest approach (well, more like 17.5kW, hence getting on for).
It's pretty amazing that you can have a spacecraft in nearly 20x direct sunlight, permanently and still have it actually work.
Displaying this would be a fun use of the Las Vegas Sphere.
I thought Sol was basically white? very yellow/orange in the left-most image.
I’m astounded by how plain and round the visible light images are. Why is the corona only visible in the UV images, if it is, according to the article, visible from earth?
Corona is very hot (millions of degrees) as opposed to 6000 of the Sun's surface, therefore it has higher contrast over Sun's surface if you go to shorter wavelengths. The reason corona is still visible from Earth is because it you mask the main solar disk (during the eclipse).
It might be that the surface is much brighter in visible light than the corona rather than the corona emits no visible light (as anyone who witnessed the recent total solar eclipse can attest). Since the corona is made up of rarefied high energy particles I would expect it to emit less total, but more short wavelength light.
> Highest-resolution images ever captured of the sun’s entire surface
Did the probe revolves around sun ?
Firstly the Sun itself rotates roughly once a month, and secondly if the probe wasn't going round the sun, it would be called the Solar Impactor, not the Solar Orbiter. Or maybe the Solar Evaporated Slag Cloud when it got close enough.
I just wanted to say I appreciate every single one of your comments on this thread but this one even more so
https://googlethatforyou.com?q=Solar%20Orbiter